Posts Tagged ‘Elizabethan drama’

When I wrote about The Taming of the Shrew last month, I mentioned that I’d come late to the enjoyment of Shakespeare’s comedies, and considered some of the reasons. I’m back here again, having revisited Much Ado About Nothing, which I realise has some similarities with the former, particularly in the central male/ female relationship.

The idea of a comedy being a story – a drama – that ends happily, rather than something that you spend a lot of time laughing at, is a difficult one for us to take on board, although if tragedy is a story with an unhappy ending, then the contrast is logical. And in a Shakespearean comedy there is usually a good deal to laugh at, even if it isn’t the primary focus. And then there is the tragi-comedy – a drama of tragedy averted – as it was so succinctly put by my English teacher at school. There are certainly tragi-comic elements in Much Ado.

I don’t find the sharpness and the displays of wit between Beatrice and Benedick anywhere near as funny or as enjoyable as those between Petruchio and Katherine, though I do like the idea of their being so ‘up themselves’ that they can be manipulated into admitting that they fancy each other, love each other, and will marry. I do find the plot which leads to the public shaming of the chaste Hero quite a shocking element in a play which will eventually turn out to have a happy ending, and Claudio’s behaviour seems quite unforgivable: thank heaven for suspension of disbelief, I suppose. And there is a reminder that the first Elizabethans prized different things from us, found different things humorous, and different behaviours acceptable.

And then there’s Dogberry and the watch: I’ve always warmed to this bumbling crew with their hearts in the right place, and the whole happy ending depends on them, of course. Somehow their blundering and their malapropisms mean the mounties get their men, as it were, and we realise how much of the success of this play depends on overheard conversations, and who overhears them and what they do with that eavesdropped knowledge…

Because it’s a comedy, the punishment of the evil Don John is deferred beyond the end of the play: there is no real assurance that he will get what he deserves, unlike what is promised Iago, for example; again an instance of the difference between tragedy and comedy.

I have yet to see a performance of this play; I suspect I will enjoy it much more when it’s brought to life. I have a DVD of the recent RSC production which I must get around to watching.

The third play I’m looking forward to seeing at Stratford is Christopher Marlowe‘s The Jew of Malta. It’s a precursor of Shakespeare‘s Merchant of Venice, and in comparison makes that latter play seek like a model of political correctness!

The wealthy merchant in Marlowe’s play is a rich Jew Barabbas, who revels in his money, jewels and luxury, and is renowned for his greed and selfishness among his own people. Antagonism between Jews and Christians is there from the outset (and it must be said that the behaviour of the Christians is far from exemplary): the state seizes Barabbas’ assets to repay tribute owed to the Turks. Having got his money, they later renege on the deal with the Turks, too. His daughter Abigail helps him retrieve some hidden wealth by pretending to become a nun; later, when she discovers that her father has engineered a duel in order to kill off her suitor, she really becomes a nun, at which point her father engineers the poisoning of the entire convent…

We see Barabbas’ increasing rage and growing insanity; he is aided by his Turkish slave Ithamore, who eventually double-crosses him… there is clearly no honour in any race or religion in this play. The end comes when Barabbas betrays the island to the Turks, and then tries his own double-cross by betraying them to the Christians: the Christians double-cross him and come out tops, killing Barabbas, after he has caused the slaughter of the Turkish forces, so that they have the Turks’ leaders as hostages…

What to make of all this? Firstly, it’s fast-paced, and great fun, if you completely ignore the racism, and general vileness of all the characters, and I suspect it will make wonderful theatre. When I compared Marlowe with Shakespeare in terms of their respective plays, I was struck by the crudity of Marlowe’s characters, and the rambling, almost make-it-up-as-you-go-along nature of the plot. Marlowe’s plot is linear (apart from the minor subplot involving the snaring of Ithamore), Shakespeare’s is tight, involved, complex (there are several subplots) and the scenes are interwoven to heighten the sense of the drama. Marlowe has some wonderful language, as he does in other of his plays, but Shakespeare’s characters in the Merchant of Venice probably outdo him.

I suspect it will be fast, crazy, almost knock-about stuff (just as Arden of Faversham turned out to be last year) and that my picture of the Elizabethan stage will be further broadened: it’s wasn’t just Shakespeare that the punters went to see…